Readers, I hope you’ll forgive our non-legal related Throwback Thursday this week, as we head into the Winter Olympics. We simply can’t help ourselves around here: we love the Olympics. Winter or summer, it doesn’t matter. Brenda handled the summer Olympics a couple of years ago on the blog, and with the opening ceremonies tomorrow in Pyeongchang, I’m taking a look at the winter games today. Here are four big stories tied to today’s date from Canadian Winter Olympics history.
On this Day, 1948 (Ottawa Connection!): 70 years ago today was the closing of the 1948 Winter Olympics, held in St. Moritz, Switzerland. It was the first Winter Olympics held after WWII, and was where Ottawa figure skater Barbara Ann Scott won gold in the women’s competition. Two factoids on this skate: 1. The skating rink was outdoors (!), and during her skate a low-flying plane overhead (!!) caused some audio distraction; and 2: in 1948 there were no Zambonis, so she had to just skate around the chopped up ice from the hockey game the night before.
Here’s a video of her skate:
On This Day, 1998: On this day in 1998, Ross Rebagliati won the first ever gold in snowboarding at the Nagano Olympics. Now there’s your legal connection: remember everything that happened after that? You can find the Court of Arbitration for Sport decision on his case here.
On this day, 2002: 16 years ago today was the opening ceremonies of the Salt Lake City Games. Some of you may remember this as a games where both the Canadian Women’s and Men’s hockey teams won gold. There was one major news story, however, that dominated those games:
On this day, 2014: We’ll end on a happy note – the Dufour-Lapointe sisters! Who doesn’t love this story of the sisters winning Gold and Silver in the Ladies’ mogul event in Sochi?